Before I was a mom I had a preconceived idea that all kids loved to colour in. Well my daughter shattered that idea. She has never been a fan.

One of the reasons why my daughter never enjoyed colouring in was because she really battled with her pencil pressure (something that is fairly common with SPD kiddies) and would end up with a very tired hand very quickly and get despondent.

After spending some time with the lovely Kirby from Jump Out The Box I changed my attitude about art supplies and instead of buying quantity started buying quality. One of my first purchases where these lovely Stabilo Woody pencils. Yes they are pricy but for my daughter they where a big part of helping her. She found the pencils very comfortable and started to enjoy using them. And added bonus is they are also water colour pencils.

The other idea that really helped encourage her to colour was giving her pictures that where already partly coloured in. I would often just print off a single page and colour part of it in for her and then she would complete the rest. I started by just leaving very small sections blank and slowly progressed to leaving more and more blank. The fact that she was able to complete a picture herself boosted her confidence and she would proudly show her daddy her picture.

I have recently started doing the same thing for my son. Here is an example of what I do. The tractor template I have used is part of the FREE transport colouring pages on Twinkl.

And I am thrilled to say that Twinkl have now very kindly created a pack of colouring pages that have already been partially coloured in. Great time saver for me. Here are two examples from their new SEN colouring pages (Platinum).